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I first remember this story from Math For Smarty Pants by Marilyn Burns,
a math book for kids afraid of math. It sort of worked on me. Mostly it gave me material for later pursuits. You may have seen similar versions in math textbooks.
The story goes something like this:
A hermit from the hills petitions the king for an audience.
He claims he can beat the king at chess. The king doubts the hermit’s claim, and promises him any prize of his asking if the king loses.
The king loses a long and challenging game and tells the hermit to name his prize.
The hermit smiles and replies, “I ask a simple thing - wheat. For the quantity, simply
place one kernel of wheat on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second,
four on the third, doubling each time.”
The king pondered this a short moment, then called his chief accountant to pay the bill.
The accountant looked worried, but hurried off. He returned quickly to inform the
king that there was not enough wheat to pay him.
How much wheat had the hermit asked for?
If you double the number of kernels for each of the 64 squares on a chessboard
(2 to the 64th minus one), thus:
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, et cetera
the final result is:
18,446,744,073,709,551,616 kernels (that’s 18 quintillion).
The approximate weight of a single kernel of California
Hard Red Winter Wheat (mixed varieties) is 0.0384 grams.
That many kernels would weigh 708,354,972,430,446,782.0544 grams
Which is 708,354,972,430.45 metric tons
Which is 780,819,686,110.08 U.S. short
tons
(the decimal part of the result above is about 160 pounds).
Well, how much is that?
The Empire State Building (ESB) weighs 365,000 tons.
It would take 2,139,232 ESBs to weigh as much as our wheat.
(The Sears Tower in Chicago weighs only 222,500 tons)
The Moon weighs 73,490,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons, so it would take
103,747,418.82293 loads of our wheat to equal the moon.
Not easy to visualize. Never mind.
US wheat production in the 2000-01 season was 2,223,440,000 bushels which is
133,406,400,000 pounds (60lbs/bushel), or 66,703,200 US tons.
Our wheat pile represents 11,705.88 years of American production based on 2000 crop yield.
For the decimal inclined, 60,512,120 metric tons were produced which divides out about the same. Good for checking my math.
If anyone wants to check/question my math, please, by all means- I’m an English major.
I’m looking for something that best expresses and gives shape to this much wheat.
Suggestions are, of course, welcome.
I’ll add more Really Heavy Things when I find them.
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